


Doubt

by pentapus



Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Genre: Cuddling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Multi, shamelessly over the top emotional h/c, ‘desperate clinging’ is probably the better word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:57:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7424611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/pseuds/pentapus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jades notices something is off with Moon, but she can't panic because Chime is already doing that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/gifts).



Jade landed at the edge of the waterfall, the smell of predator blood still filling her nostrils, streaks of it marking her hands and calves. She leaned gratefully into the cool, sheeting mist. 

A dozen Arbora met her at the entrance, climbing down from the platforms in their scaled forms with spears and ropes. At the front of the group, Bone called out, “All clear?”

“We didn’t find any more inside.” Jade looked the Arbora over carefully. Her heart still beat furiously at the memory of tearing through thick, spiny skin. Nobody seemed bloodier than the last time she'd seen them, but she still asked, “You?”

Bone shook his head, wiping dark purple blood off his face with the back of his hand. He’d been among the first to arrive when the predator had broken through the lower levels. He didn’t look relieved by Jade’s information. The old colony had taught him pessimism the hard way. 

Gold flashed in the lower branches, and Pearl shot up to land next to them. Several of her warriors followed, finding perches around the colony entrance, gaze turned out towards the tree’s canopy of platforms planted with the colony’s crops.

“No more on the ground,” Pearl said. “Bone, what did you see?”

Bone nodded at Flint to report: “We found one trail coming in along the platforms to the east. A climber, not a ground dweller. No signs of any others with it.”

“It had the claws of a climber,” Jade said. Bone cast a glance at his own climbing claws, two inches long and polished to a deep charcoal shine with frequent use.

He grimaced. “But it went for the ground door instead of the main entrance.”

“I hate the smart ones,” Pearl snarled, pacing along the platform with her wings half-open as if she was about to jump into flight. Pearl was the biggest thing there, her gold and blue scales catching the dappled sunlight. Even Jade felt like shying away from her. 

Protection was a queen’s responsibility, but Jade had barely gotten to the fight in time to land a single blow on the long, spiny monster that had boiled out of the lower levels of the tree. It left her restless, her skin crawling.

She looked out towards the distant crown of the tree. “What about the Emerald Twilight party?”

“The trading party,” Pearl said with a hiss. She managed to sound both approving and annoyed.

Bone scratched his brow ridge. “They left early yesterday. Some of the predator tracks could have been older than that. I’d say it’s been in the area a few days, watching.”

Pearl flicked a spine at Floret. “Go check on them, at least to the edge of our territory. Do it now. I don’t want time to change my mind.”

Jade shot her mother a sharp look. It was easy to think of Pearl as deliberately difficult, but then Pearl would say something that showed she knew her own limits, knew she had trouble acting as quickly or as strongly as the colony needed her to. 

Jade frowned, looking around. “Where’s Moon?”

“He was in the nurseries when Ginger sounded the alarm,” Bone said. Jade nodded. Because that’s what soldiers did in an emergency; they checked the nurseries, then the consorts, and then anybody known to be outside. But Moon usually didn’t require checking. He was usually on the front line.

One of the younger soldiers laughed. She was half bent over with exhaustion, cleaning dark blood from a spear. “Of course he was. Does he even sleep in the bowers anymore?”

Bone ignored the comment, looking Jade in the eye. “I haven’t seen him since.”

The soldier froze in the middle of cleaning off her spear. Unease rippled through Jade’s spines. She hadn’t seen Moon at the fight. He couldn’t have -- there wasn’t any way that --

Jade whipped around and leapt across the entry hall.

** 

Moon was in the nurseries, and he was pristine. No blood, not even a smudge of dirt.

Teachers and fledglings bustled around him. Thorn and Bitter pressed up against his legs, clutching at the soft, dark fabric of his clothes, which the Arbora had embroidered around the edges in green vines and silver flowers. Chime stood close by, hands fluttering nervously. 

Jade took in Moon’s untouched appearance with confusion, her spines quivering with the urgent beat of her heart. 

Chime’s spines sank with relief when she arrived. The motion caught Moon’s attention, but when he saw Jade, he looked away, his fingers curling in Thorn and Bitter’s hair. Jade missed a step in her approach, confused and suspicious. 

“Are you alright?” Jade asked. 

“I’m fine,” Moon said. He pulled Bitter up into his arms, a silent barrier with dark eyes slowly blinking at Jade. 

“We stayed here!” Chime said brightly. The skin around his eyes looked tight. “In the nurseries. For the whole ordeal. Are you alright? It sounded awful.” He gave Jade a look of baffled panic over Moon’s shoulder. _Help me with this,_ his face said.

“This is where I’m supposed to stay,” Moon said, glowering at the back of Bitter’s head instead of at Jade. His expression flickered through uncertainty and regret and settled on determination. Bitter stared at Jade, three fingers stuck in his mouth.

That was... true. Jade gave Chime her own baffled expression. It didn’t seem like a _bad_ thing, Moon staying out of trouble. Except that anytime Moon went unreadable, Jade started waiting for disaster. Especially when she was still wearing the blood of a creature that had torn its way into her court. 

“Yes,” she said slowly.

“The clutch is safe,” Moon added. He shot her a quick worried look asking for reassurance. Jade opened her mouth to give it and stopped, her eyes sliding over the crowd around them.

Every Arbora in the room was listening attentively. Jade spotted at least two of her mother’s favorites. 

“Thank you for protecting the clutches,” Jade said instead. _That’s probably why he stayed out of the fight._ _To protect the clutch. Everything’s fine._

Her spines started to relax, but when she tried to catch Moon’s eye, to nod her gratitude as a fighter and a queen, the only eyes pointed her way were Bitter’s, staring at her under a furrowed brow, his nose mashed into Moon’s silk-covered shoulder. Moon was looking fixedly at the floor.

Unease prickled along Jade’s spine.

She let the teachers lead her to their sleeping royal clutch, the tiny bodies still a dark matte bronze, too young to develop color patterns. The smell of them calmed her, made Moon’s behavior seem temporary, a forgotten blip in the long lives of their children. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t known he could be difficult. Sometimes he wasn’t any easier to deal with than Pearl. 

“The predator never came near them,” Blossom assured her. 

“Good,” Jade said weakly. _But then why was Moon here?_

**

“But then why was he there?” Chime asked later, jostled as Arbora and warriors pushed past him to pick up supplies for their longer patrols. The area closest to the tree had finally been cleared. Everyone wanted to know if there was another predator out there, waiting a little farther out. “You asked him?”

Jade shot him a look. “You didn’t?”

“Well, he’s not _injured_ ,” Chime said with the confidence of someone who’d made a thorough inspection. Possibly more than one, probably last night. 

Jade frowned, uncertain why she wasn’t more relieved to hear that. It had been a possibility -- that Moon had pulled himself out of the action because of some concealed physical ailment. Moon would much rather let things clear up on their own than admit weakness. 

Jade felt herself open her mouth and say petulantly, “He’s been sleeping with _you_ since the attack _.”_

A few feet away, Vine’s head turned towards her before jerking away. Jade winced.

“No, he hasn’t,” Chime said startled.

Jade stared back at him. “He’s been sleeping _alone_?”

“I -- yes, I -- maybe he was with the Abora? But.” Chime swallowed, visibly calming himself. “Sometimes Moon needs to be on his own.”

“I _know that,_ ” Jade said, lip lifting almost into a snarl. Of course _she_ knew that. She didn’t know the first thing about courting or claiming or keeping a normal consort, but she at least had to know _something_ about Moon. Didn’t she?

“Jade,” Balm said. “We’re ready to leave.”

Jade consciously pulled her expression back to neutral. 

Chime’s hand touched her forearm softly. “You’ll talk to him?”

All her spines went stiff with a full body _No_ that took her by surprise. No, she _didn’t_ want to talk to Moon. She’d been avoiding it since the attack. She hadn't pushed when he hadn't come to her at night. _What are you afraid of?_ she thought.

No, she did know. She was afraid of another Opal Night. She was afraid that Moon would tell her, again, that no matter what she did or said, he didn’t believe she wanted him or that he belonged here. That he'd tell her he was thinking about leaving. 

Jade hadn’t realized how much that trip to Opal Night had exhausted her, knowing that for Moon ‘not looking back’ wasn’t about a lack of caring for those he left behind; it was about survival. For most of his life, lingering connections to communities that had repudiated him had been the kind of thing that could get him killed. It meant she _knew_ thatif Moon ever decided to leave the Reaches, he would not turn back for her. Not for Chime. Not even for Frost, Thorn, and Bitter. He would just be gone.

They had a clutch now. If Moon still didn’t believe, if the doubt was a sickness in him Jade couldn’t fix, then Jade… didn’t want to hear about it today. Later, things would be more stable, more safe, it would be easier to face. _Later,_ she could face it like a queen. Later, please.

And after all, maybe it was nothing.

She turned away from Chime, leading Balm and a group of warriors towards the knothole entrance. The would head east to the last trail the hunters had found. As Balm came up beside her, Jade let herself ask casually, “Which patrol is Moon on?”

“He’s not going out,” Balm said. “He’s guarding the Arbora repairing the ground entrance.”

Jade clenched her teeth. “Good,” she said with difficulty. “He’ll keep them safe.”

_**_

Moon looked more like Moon when Jade caught him on the way to dinner, her spines stiff, trying to hide dread and uncertainty. He wore vibrantly dyed but simple clothing, body bare of jewellery except the bracelet that had been her courting gift. Normally she found that reassuring, but today she glared at it like it wasn't doing its job.

He'd spent the last few days in unusually fine clothing for the diplomatic visit, adorned with gold along his arms and throat, small jeweled cuffs on the shell of his ear. He'd done well for the first day, which had been largely a delivery of gifts for the occasion of the first clutch of a ranking consort, but after that, he'd retreated, let Ember handle nearly every decision regarding etiquette.

As soon as she pulled him side, Moon said immediately, “I'm not doing that again.”

He sounded sick, guilty, his mouth turned down like he felt unwell. Jade had no idea what he was talking about. She let her eyebrows go up and waited. She was, after all, a queen, and explanations were owed to her.

“The attack,” Moon said. “I tried to -- I thought I could convince myself to stay out of it because I needed to protect the clutch.” He looked into the hall where the Arbora were laying out the evening meal, his eyes tight with worry. Jade could spot several Arbora with bandages from here. “Nobody died, but I should have been out there.”

“Yes,” Jade said eventually. She was trying to process how Moon had come back at the question of proper consort behavior months after she thought it had been resolved. _Was that it? Something so fixable?_ “That’s -- good; you’re a good fighter. You’ve done a lot to protect the colony.”

Moon didn't look like that made him feel better. He was also dirty, a smudge across his cheek and on his tunic. 

“You went out with the patrols?” Jade said.

“Watching the entrance repairs.”

Jade had known that, but she nodded anyway. “We didn’t find any other predator signs in the area, but some of the game had cleared out.” 

“So it was in the area a few days.”

“I don’t like that something that could get in here was just out there watching us.” 

Moon didn't say anything, like he wasn't paying attention.

“You're alright then?” Jade pressed.

Moon picked at a streak of dirt on his arm. “Yeah,” he said, listless.

Jade didn't know why she wasn't reassured. Or more importantly, why Moon wasn't back to normal now that Jade had reminded him he wasn't a normal consort and no one in this tree expected him to be.

_**_

“Chime,” Jade said.

She found boxes and bundles spread across Moon’s bower. Moon wasn’t there, but Chime was, holding up some slinky fabric to the light suspiciously before adding it to a pile. 

“I talked to him,” Chime said.

A lead brick dropped into Jade’s stomach. She tried not to flare her spines. Everybody already knew a queen could throw them through a wall. It was rude to _remind_ them. Evenly, she said, “I didn’t ask you to talk to him. I asked you to --”

Cheer him up. Bribe him. 

“He’s fine,” Chime sighed. He straightened a pile of exquisitely decorated manuscripts Moon couldn’t read. “He didn’t know why I was asking, except of course, that he’s willing to pick up any fledgling close enough to avoid a conversation.”

“He was in the nurseries, you mean.” Jade forced her claws to uncurl. Instead of being annoyed that Chime had talked to Moon, now she was annoyed that Chime _hadn’t_ gotten a real answer either. The worst part would have been over. No more imagining terrible revelations (that he'd never loved any of them like a home, that he was leaving tomorrow).

“He's always in the nurseries,” Chime said.

Jade took a breath and looked carefully at the wall, “What do you think, then?”

Chime cast a baffled look at the gifts. They’d both been there when the Emerald Twilight delegation had delivered it all, along with their formal congratulations. “I don't know that any of this will cheer him up much, except maybe the sweets.”

“I tried those. He said he didn't like sweets.”

Chime have her a horrified look. “He _loves_ sweets.”

“I know,” Jade snapped, all the muscles in her neck knotting up. “I meant. What’s wrong. With Moon.”

Chime shook his head. “Nothing. He just gets sad sometimes, and I don’t think he knows how to use the colony to make himself _less sad_.” He added anxiously, “He's been sleeping alone.”

“Yes.” Jade remembered Chime’s panicked face in the nurseries the day the climber-digger had come out of the lower levels.

“Maybe,” Chime said, “maybe we just _think_ this is a -- a ‘feral consort raised by the wilds’thing, and it’s not. It’s totally normal first clutch consort moodiness. We haven’t had any consorts with first clutches in a while. Maybe we just don’t know.” 

“So, we should treat him like a normal consort? Giving him… things. Jewelry and sweets -- ” 

Jade would never tell Moon, but she’d gotten a lot farther treating him like a gently-bred consort of high rank than she had treating him like a dangerous, feral wanderer.

Chime's face fell. “We're already doing that.”

“-- and, uh, petting him.” Jade regretted that choice of words immediately. It was accurate, but she didn’t mean sex. She meant _My feral consort is touch-starved._ But that took them straight back around to how Moon was not normal by any Raksuran measure, and right now they were trying to pretend otherwise. _Everything is totally normal._

Queens were supposed to know what they were doing, and someday someone was going to notice that Jade _never knew._

Chime looked hopefully at his open palms, fingers curling like he was preparing himself for a good bout of Moon petting. “We could do that. I could do that. It might work?”

Jade grimaced. It wouldn't if they didn't know where he was sleeping.

Maybe the answer was the nurseries, _again_. Every moment he wasn’t required to to help with the social and political health of the colony, Moon was in the nurseries. Sometimes he acted like they were dragging him out against this will. As if there was anyone in the colony who wouldn’t have let Moon stay there all day if he wanted to. It was _his clutch._

 _Our clutch._ _Why doesn’t he act like we’re in this together?_

“I don’t know,” Jade admitted. “I’m just -- worried. What if this _is_ a Moon thing, and he works himself up into leaving? When he gets like this, the first thing that goes wrong is that he decides he can’t say anything to anyone.”

Chime jerked his head, startled. “He wouldn’t leave. He has a _clutch._ He can’t convince himself he’s unwanted anymore, not when _we are raising his clutch?”_ His voice lifted with a hysterical note. He stared at Jade, pleading for reassurance. 

Jade put her hands over her face and dug her claws into her frills. They were thicker than they’d been even a few turns ago. Soon no one would call her young during diplomatic visits or wonder how she could handle a consort like _Moon_. They thought Moon was a powerful handful and not an _idiot._

She made a frustrated sound into her forearms. She would rather be angry than be worried that Moon could _still_ pull the conviction out of thin air that he wasn’t a part of their colony, that they were all the enemy and had been lying to him for -- Jade’s spines straightened, a frisson moving over her scales -- for _years_ now. She had successfully tricked Moon out of abandoning them for _years._

Chime made a little sad sound that she ignored. Jade was thinking, full of heated annoyance: maybe one day Moon will _stop trying to leave._

Moon’s doubt in his place at Indigo Cloud was like lung sickness; it had the terrifying ability to flare up in someone who’d already survived it once. You had to get someone with a lung flare to the mentors as quickly as possible. Jade’s father had died of not getting to the mentors fast enough. 

Getting angry about Moon's doubt was easier then getting worried. If Jade didn’t get angry, she’d just get scared. Scared of Moon whipping himself up into an anxious frenzy too quickly for anyone to notice before he did something to hurt himself -- and them -- when he left them behind.

“Should we -- ” Chime made a gesture in the air that could have been comforting or obscene. 

“No,” Jade said, “if he wants to be in the nurseries, let’s go to the nurseries.”

Maybe Moon would change his mind and want to be outside where Jade could tear something apart for him.

**

Moon wasn't in the nurseries.

He was hanging upside down from the bottom of a platform with three Arbora soldiers, watching a rustle in the leaves down below, trying to decide if it was dangerous.

“Any signs of the predator?” Jade knew they’d found no evidence of another one, but she would be happy for any sign of Moon putting himself back into the colony defenses. He _was_ outside, and maybe she _could_ tear something apart for him. Remind him he was valued the old fashioned way.

“What? Oh, no,” said Anchor, her arm hooked through a hanging root as Jade and Chime swung down into their vantage point. “We’re hunting branch spiders.”

“Flit got bitten last week,” Moon said, eyes focused on the shifting grasses of the platform beneath them. They were out near the crown of the tree where the protective branches gave way to the open forest. He didn’t look at them.

“But they’re all over the place aren’t they?” Chime said. “I mean, I don’t like them, they’re _poisonous -- ”_

“We think they’ve started nesting in the garden platforms out here,” Anchor said. “They like the tubers we planted.”

Moon finally turned to face them. He looked normal, wearing his usual productive-colony-member face, that one that said, _I am here to protect you, Warriors annoy me,_ and _Will you still sleep with me if I move in with the Arbora because I like them better._ Jade wanted nothing more than to get back to that world where just being in the colony made Moon interested and open and involved. Where Jade didn’t spend most of her day plotting with Chime to trick Moon into acting like himself. 

“If we find the nests,” Moon said, “we can get them out of the whole tree. Heart won’t have to keep sending the Arbora out here with a bundle of pre-made simples.” When Chime blinked at him, he added mulishly, “It’s worth the time.”

Chime put a hand to his chest, his whole body slumping with released tension. To Jade: “Oh, thank goodness, he’s invested.” The move shifted his balance, and he flung a wing out, nearly wobbling off his perch in the hanging roots. He didn’t seem to notice. “Well! I’m going back inside.”

He lurched awkwardly along the tree root to give Moon a enthusiastic nip on the ear before he leapt, wings catching the air with more grace than people gave him credit for. 

Moon stared after Chime, his brow ridge pulled down. 

Jade didn’t feel relieved. She’d seen the way Moon went stiff when Chime nipped him, and the way he turned back to watching for branch spiders without looking at Jade. The same way he’d been avoiding her eyes for a week. The spines at the back of his neck lifted uneasily and then jerked flat like he was forcing his body language to behave.

Jade frowned suspiciously, something queasy turning over in her stomach. Her claws left a deep furrow in the root underneath her.

**

“Are you going to help the soldiers again tomorrow?” Jade asked.

Jade lay with her leg thrown over both of Moon’s and her wing spread over him like a canopy. When they’d first started sleeping together, she’d been wary of making him feel trapped, but Moon seemed to enjoy being crowded when they were alone. There were a lot of ways in which Moon was exactly what Jade had been led to expect from a consort. One of the biggest was exactly how happy he was to feel physically protected -- well, during sex anyway.

He had been interested in sex earlier, but in a guarded way. More than once Jade had needed to wait for Moon to say out loud what he liked, that it was good, instead of letting his body language speak for him. It was another throwback to his first few months at the colony.

“Yes,” Moon said, rubbing his cheek against the ridged scales next to her ear. “I want the branch spiders taken care of and finished.” 

And then he went stiff like he’d said something he shouldn’t.

“It’s good to do once a season probably,” Jade agreed. After a beat, she added carefully, “You can help them next season too.”

Moon started shivering and nodded stiffly against her neck. 

“And the season after that,” she added, “and the -- ”

“Stop,” Moon said.

It hit Jade like a blow. Her teeth clenched, and her face flushed. She packed those feelings down and wrapped him up tightly in her arms instead, feeling him shake through his shoulders and his chest. “ _Moon_. You aren’t going anywhere.”

“I know. Yes. I know that.” He sounded like he was appeasing her. Repeating something he’d memorized.

“...Good,” Jade said.

“If I left now the clutch wouldn’t even remember me,” Moon said quietly and stopped Jade cold. The ice in her veins was the same urgent fear she’d felt trying to get to Opal Night, knowing that no force in the Three Worlds would make Moon believe she was coming for him. Knowing that if she didn’t make it in time, he’d leave the Reaches, and it would be another thirty years of wandering before she found him again.

Jade made an angry sound, all her spines going up in a threat posture she couldn't control. Her wings spread out, the canopy over them growing, letting shadows from the shell lights pass over Moon’s face, eyes screwed shut and his expression resigned. Inside she was cold and terrified. She tightened her grip, nipping his neck.

“You aren’t going anywhere, you’re part of our court and we love you -- ”

“Stop,” Moon said, “stop, stop.”

Jade dropped him, but Moon reached out in an aborted gesture, his expression going miserable, then resigned then blank. Jade found herself caught in an aborted gesture of her own, half reaching out, half pulling back. She didn’t want to be told _stop_ so desperately ever again. 

“Stop… talking?” She put a hand experimentally on his shoulder.

Moon was looking fixedly at some point on the ceiling. He nodded jerkily.

“But -- you -- ” Jade blew air out her nose in frustration because it was a better reaction than wailing that she just wanted to know what he wanted. Jade pulled him slowly into her chest, fitting his cheek in the curve of her shoulder. Moon started to shake as though he was having an attack of something -- of unbearable unhappiness probably, and Jade clutched him helplessly. Uselessly. 

She fell asleep eventually without really noticing whether he’d stopped. 

She woke up to see Moon sitting up in the bed watching her. He looked better. His expression was wry with a little of the humor she’d gotten used to seeing from him, but the skin around his eyes looked bruised. He had sleep impressions from her scales on his cheek.

“Sorry,” he said. 

“It’s okay,” she said quickly, though it probably wasn’t.

Moon nodded mechanically and slipped out of the bower.

It was awful to not have any idea what she was doing -- which made her feel like she wasn’t doing anything at all -- but to still feel responsible for everything anyway. Jade had a sudden nightmare vision of this stretching out for years, of things going badly forever, Jade never understanding how she was supposed to fix it and forever making it worse always. She imagined being a queen whose consort, whose clutches, whose entire court wasted away in despair no matter what she did, and how hopelessly paralyzing that would be. 

She wouldn’t be able to take it -- she simply wouldn’t survive. 

Her eyes widened as realization washed over her. She had just described the slow, devastating decline of the Indigo Cloud court at the river temple colony.

Jade had one of those terrible moments that children have -- when they realize that no matter how much work they’ve put into being completely different, they are exactly like their parents after all.

She stared hollowly at the ceiling. She was going to have to talk to her mother.


	2. Chapter 2

Talking to Pearl wasn’t simple. It needed planning, except Jade so badly didn't want to do it that she didn't do any planning at all. She had to go now, immediately, before her nerve failed, and so she landed on the balcony of the queen’s level to find Pearl surrounded by her faction, her warriors, her Arbora favorites and confidantes. All staring at Jade.

Jade hesitated, awkward and frustrated by it.

There was no way to avoid a power struggle in front of an audience. Everything they said would be against a backdrop of Stone and Flower’s plan to take the court and its new consort from Pearl and give them both to Jade. Part of that plan had failed, and part of it -- Moon -- Jade had won, very publicly. Now Jade was going back to Pearl in defeat, as though Pearl had been right: Moon was too difficult a consort for an inexperienced daughter queen, especially one masquerading as a sister queen. Every embarrassing faux pas Moon committed was on Jade’s head for not… domesticating him properly. 

Maybe Pearl didn't think that. Jade could never tell how deeply Pearl did or didn't care about any of Jade's problems.

Without looking up from her gameboard, Pearl said, “What’s on fire?”

_My personal life_ , Jade thought. But there were too many people here, and Pearl had already assumed out loud in front of all of them that Jade _needed_ something. She concentrated on not baring her teeth in frustration. She was right, and Jade regretted now the abrupt and dramatic nature of her arrival. But she refused to act like it was entirely _her_ fault that coming to Pearl had become a last resort.

Bone and Ember sat on the other side of the gameboard. It was hard to tell who was actually Pearl’s opponent. Ember was talking to two Arbora who were asking him questions about Emerald Twilight’s elaborate tea etiquette while Bone gestured with both hands, arguing with Pearl without looking at the game pieces at all.

Pearl placed a game piece with a wooden clink. From the other side of the board, Ember gazed politely up at Jade. The adolescent Arbora next to him continued moving the tea cups around, mouthing imagined political banter under her breath.

“Nothing’s on fire,” Jade said.

“Jade,” Bone said. “Tell Pearl it’s time to send the hunters on the longer routes again, with a soldier escort.”

Jade sighed internally. Bone had Stone’s bluntness but none of the political deftness behind it. And asking Jade to publicly disagree with Pearl was not going to help Jade get what _she_ wanted.

“You have too many injured soldiers to guard the tree _and_ the hunting parties,” Pearl said. “Not when you’re also trying to get the branch spiders out of the gardens.”

“That’s Moon’s project,” Bone said.

“If a consort takes half your Arbora, it’s _your_ project.”

Bone looked at Jade again. Against her better judgement, she opened her mouth and said, “It _is_ Moon’s project.”

The more responsibilities he had, the more he had to stay, right?

Pearl gave her a withering stare, the weight of the colony behind her gaze, pressing against Jade’s awareness as a slight tiredness and difficulty of focus, a small loss of self to a wider, community sense. _Yield_. Jade rustled her spines and huffed, breaking eye contact. 

Pearl ran her fingers over a smooth stone game piece, satisfied.

Bone got to his feet, resignation in his slow movements. “Tomorrow, then,” he warned Pearl.

Ember was still waiting with excellent posture for Pearl to finish her turn. “She’s a horrible loser,” Jade warned, aiming for dry distance but landing closer to petulant. 

“Oh,” Ember said, looking between them, pained but in a elegant way. “Well.”

Pearl snorted. “The last time we played this game, you were a fledgling. Whatever you remember me doing, I assure you, your response was worse.”

Jade shot her a startled look, her world view tilting. Was that true? She had never wondered where the bone deep knowledge that Pearl handled defeat gracelessly had come from -- except that Pearl _did_ handle defeat gracelessly, or at least snidely, so Jade should stop letting her mother throw her off balance like this.

“Pearl, I want to talk with you privately.”

Pearl watched her skeptically. For a moment, Jade thought Pearl was going to talk to her as though the Arbora weren’t there, which Jade had always _hated_. At some point her problems had to stop being fledgling problems that could be aired to every Arbora caretaker in the colony. 

Finally, Pearl flicked a talon in acquiescence. Of course, Jade had already given everyone watching more that enough reason to assume she was here begging pitifully for help. But at least they didn't know _how_ pitifully. They didn't know that Jade couldn't handle her own consort.

“I need your advice… with Moon,” Jade said with difficulty.

Pearl's spines lifted slowly with wary interest. Jade had managed to surprise her mother. 

She didn't elaborate. It had been hard enough to say the first time. After a moment Pearl rolled her eyes, dryly amused. “Tell him to stop embarrassing us in front of other courts. Ember can teach him how to serve tea in twenty-seven steps and refuse to be seen in public without at least six pieces of jewelry.”

“No, that isn’t -- “ Jade took a breath and blurted it out: “I think he’s going to leave again.”

“Leave,” Pearl repeated. Her expression turned hard. Jade's back tightened; she had made a mistake. Pearl set her game piece down dangerously slowly. “We _are_ no longer desperate and half-dead. He must not feel quite so much like we're at his mercy as he used to.” 

“ _No_ ,” Jade said in a rush and then regretted it. “I don't mean that he's ungrateful. I mean -- he doesn't want to leave.” But Jade didn't know how to explain that right either. “ _I_ don't want him to leave.”

Pearl frowned at her. “If he wants to, you can’t stop him.” Her tone was kinder at least.

Jade slumped.

“You said he doesn't want to leave?” Pearl sounded annoyed that she had to deal with this, but that just meant she was past the point of joking or taking offense. She was listening now, even if she was going to make sure Jade knew that she _really_ didn't want to. “You don’t tell him he’s wanted? I'm assuming he hasn't decided to take River's opinion over yours and everyone else's in the colony.”

“It doesn't work,” Jade said, embarrassed like she was confessing an inadequacy of her own. “It's like he gets… attacks of disbelief.”

“Attacks. During which, no combination of words can touch him.” There was something knowing in her tone that made Jade stare at her mother. “It's happened before? And ended, presumably, since he's still here. How long did the last one take to go away?”

“I don't know. The last one was Opal Night.”

Pearl made a moue of distaste. The alliance with Opal Night had immediately improved Indigo Cloud's situation in the Reaches, but Jade got the impression Pearl wasn't certain the increase in trade goods was worth the price of pretending to tolerate another queen, especially a queen like Malachite.

“You need to take control,” Pearl said. “Stop assuming that because he’s independent and dangerous that you aren’t in control. You need to tell him exactly what he needs to do when he feels an attack coming and then you need to enforce it.”

_But what does he need to do_ , Jade thought desperately.

“For now, bring him here, and I’ll tie him into the colony to remind him what he's forgotten.”

“ _No_ ,” Jade said. Her spines came up, a sharp denial. She watched her mother warily, waiting for Pearl to make Jade say it out loud -- to remind Pearl exactly what she'd done the last time she'd pulled Moon into the colony's connection. Moon would never let Pearl touch him, and the moment he realized Jade had let it happen, she'd lose his fragile trust. Then what would keep him here?

But Pearl didn't demand a formal accusation or incite a challenge. She acknowledged the past with a flick of a spine, and Jade's spines sank slowly down to her back. It wasn't as much of a relief as she wanted it to be. What if Pearl _could_ have fixed it?

“Just wait for him to come out of it, like usual, then.”

Jade looked miserably at the floor. “Maybe I can just find another giant predator to attack us,” she muttered.

“You chose him,” Pearl said. “You get the whole package, sickness and all.”

Jade flung herself out of the hall.

**

Jade went out with the warriors doing wide sweeps for any more of the lizard-like predator that had torn its way into the colony. She tore apart a branch spider nest just on the edge of their territory, and then in a panic that she’d helped Moon get closer to wrapping up his affairs, she made Vine swear not to mention it. He stared at her like he was waiting for her to snap, but he agreed.

She had a brief but vivid fantasy of _making_ Moon stay, stealing him from himself and keeping him like a sad, trembling consort in a story. The idea had a lot of appeal.

She stalked back into the colony, not any calmer -- and when had talking to Pearl ever done anything but strip her nerves raw -- and found Moon in his bower talking to Ember. He was dressed nearly as nicely as for a diplomatic visit, his skin scrubbed clean and glowing warmly in the shell lights, a deep bronze against the red stones in his jewelry. Jade was learning to hate these signs of consort-like behavior. Moon trying to fit in would be one thing, but this felt like an outsider trying not to rock the boat. Politely observing the rules of _someone else’s house._

Jade turned back up the hallway and slammed her closed fist into the wall, dislodging dust and pieces of bark. She snarled, and then she composed her expression so she wouldn’t be showing Moon violence when she walked in.

Chime was sitting with them, a few books shoved behind his back. Moon leaned comfortably against a pillow, but his expression was a weird mix of hopelessness and determination. Jade wondered if he’d heard her in the hall. 

“Oh, Jade!” Ember said, putting on an expression that seemed to be his ‘consort happy to see a queen’ face. Jade wondered if it was that obvious all the time or if she’d be more used to it in a big court where all her adult experience with breeding age consorts wasn’t _Moon_. 

Ember made busy _I was just leaving_ noises, turning to physically press Moon’s hands back onto his knees as though he were posing a statue and making sure he was satisfied with his work. Moon let it happen, frozen stiff except for his face, which was giving Ember an incredulous look that said _did you just touch me_? Ember responded with a politely encouraging smile, but it looked a little pinched. He always seemed uncertain about where he stood with Moon, not realizing that there was no one else Moon trusted to know what to do as a consort to make the court run smoothly. 

She had a sudden thought, which she hoped desperately was true, that Moon might have asked Ember for advice on another problem: what to do about his doubt-sickness. And maybe Moon had believed him when Ember said something like, “You should absolutely, definitely not leave the court or try to fight anything that might hurt you while you are clearly half out of your mind.” 

Ember leaned over one last time to hiss not-quietly-enough into Moon's ear, “ _Serve tea.”_

Which left Jade settling awkwardly onto the low, pillow-covered bench while Moon stared at the still steaming tea service on a rock next to the warming stones. He didn’t actually make any move to serve tea.

“Hi,” Jade said.

“Hi,” he said.

“Did Ember teach you to serve tea?”

“I asked,” Moon admitted. Jade winced. That was as worryingly un-Moonlike as wearing jewelry or waiting quietly in the nurseries for the Arbora to protect him. “There are 27 steps.” Moon's expression was that of someone remembering horror. “I don't think I'm going to learn to seductively serve tea to foreign queens.”

Jade bared her teeth. “Well, of course you aren’t going to fucking do that,” Jade said. “You’re _my_ consort.”

For a moment, Moon looked amused, and then he guiltily looked away.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m --”

“Because you’re wearing jewelry. I should probably call a mentor.”

“I’m _supposed_ to wear jewelry.”

“Says who?”

“To represent the court in the reaches,” Moon recited, “I’m supposed to look healthy and rich and safe so the court looks healthy and rich and safe!”

Jade stared at him. He _had_ been talking to Ember about this. “How can you worry about representing the court _and_ talk about leaving? You -- you don’t need to earn your keep.”

Moon moved his shoulders back in an echo of Ember’s posture at Pearl’s game table -- or that of a soldier bracing for battle. “Yes, I _do._ ”

“No, you don't. And you don’t need to leave. Ever.” Jade hoped she'd managed a calm and reasonable tone and not just a _fighting Raksuran queen's_ idea of calm and reasonable. “You never need to leave. _I_ never want you to leave.”

He set his jaw. “You need a consort who can help the court diplomatically.”

“Which doesn’t have anything to do with this being your home.”

Moon looked at the floor. “Ok.”

Jade hesitated. “Do you believe me?”

“Why wouldn’t I believe you? I don’t think you’re _lying.”_

“Do you think I’m _wrong?”_ Jade demanded, frustrated. Talking about things was supposed to fix them, to prevent stupid misunderstandings like that _infertility_ mix up disaster. Instead the more talking they did, the less communication seemed to be happening. “This is why queens just _tell_ their consorts to do things.”

Moon's expression turned a little wistful.

“Don't even try to pretend that would work,” Jade said.

His lips twisted in self-deprecating acknowledgement. “When I joined the court, you needed a consort and a clutch. Now, there's... Ember.”

Jade's vision went white with the urge for violence. She felt awkwardly too big sitting next to a pretty tea set, her body a weapon in muscle, claw, and tail, trying not to make a threat display to her own not-stolen -- panicking? -- consort just because she'd remembered that last year Emerald Twilight had stolen him and offered her a consolation prize. _Ember._

Of course, Moon didn't notice. Aside from being unusually ornery when faced with angry Raksuran queens, his ability to read Raksuran body language was barely above that of a talented groundling diplomat. 

“Your job didn't end when you gave me a clutch,” Jade tried, too calm, feeling separated from her body, her claws digging into her knees like they were someone else's.

Moon's expression was infuriating. Stubborn. Quietly, he said, “I want you to tell me the truth.”

“ _What_ truth?” Now Jade _was_ making a threat display, spines flaring out, and Moon noticed, his face setting with determination.

There _had_ to be something else going on.

“The clutch was the only thing the court _needed_ me to do,” Moon said patiently. “Everything else is just -- things I'm not very good at.” Diplomacy. Greeting foreign courts. Disliking foreign queens and warriors at least marginally less than Pearl did. “You have more queens now, too, and better standing in the Reaches.”

Jade didn't want to tell Moon he was right about any of that, even though he was, and maybe that's what he was sensing when he said _tell me the truth._ It felt like she was holding onto him with only her claw tips, and validating even the tiniest of his reasons to doubt was too much risk for her to stomach. She was afraid. Pearl had been right to think Jade hadn't been ready to rule.

“You haven’t given the Arbora a clutch,” she said instead of outright denying anything he'd said, “and our standing in the Reaches is increasing because I _married very well._ If we treated you unwelcomely, Malachite would -- but we don’t want you just because we’re scared of your mother -- ”

Jade had a sudden thought that made her heart stutter to a stop. She said haltingly,“Would you -- would you feel better at Opal Night -- if they were your family, your bloodline, so you’d _know,_ wouldn't _doubt --”_

Moon gripped her hands in a kind of panic. 

She gripped back. “I don’t want that! But I feel like anything I say, you keep -- “ She took a breath, forcing her spines down. It sounded too accusatory, especially when Moon looked so braced for an attack. “Anything I say, there’s a bad spin that could go with it.”

She watched anxiously, but Moon was nodding, tired frustration in the lines of his body. “Yeah, there’s -- there’s a bad way to state everything. There’s a machine in my head that states everything badly.”

Jade felt slack with relief. _Oh, thank you, he knows._ “Yes. It's,” she hesitated, but Pearl had agreed with her on this, “like an illness.”

“That's what Chime said, sort of. That when the colony was failing, there were warriors and Arbora and -- ” Moon's eyes flicked up, unusually diplomatic in not mentioning the most obvious and glaring example: Pearl. “Who got nervous attacks, or unusual unhappiness. That it was part of the mentors’ job to help them.”

Jade nodded. Moon took a long breath. It didn't look nervous or shaky, and he wasn't looking at their hands like he was grieving prematurely.

“You can't leave when you're sick,” Jade said, really needing to drive this point home. 

Moon rolled his eyes at her. Like she was a fledgling making a fuss.“I'm not going to leave,” he said like Jade was being unreasonable and he found it endearing.

Jade considered smacking him. She narrowed her eyes. “Really.”

“I just thought -- you might want me to.” When Jade's lips pulled back from her teeth, he added, “I mean the _court_. Maybe.” He shot an annoyed glance at the ceiling. “Sometimes this sounds stupider out loud than other times.”

“ _Good_ ,” Jade said.

She opened her mouth to say more, but she was interrupted by the sound of singing. It was drifting in from the central well of the mountain tree as Raksura on all levels began the evening chorus. She hadn't realized it was so late.

Pearl had thought the mental bond between the colony would be the best medicine for Moon's sickness, an illness Pearl had seemed to find familiar. And the evening song was part of that connection; it was the _point_ of the song. Jade would never let Pearl touch Moon, but the mental connection to the colony was Jade's right, too. 

She wasn't the ruling queen, but she could at least navigate the connection to the mind of her own consort without starting a mutiny.

Probably.

**

The first time Jade had really seen Moon had been when Stone had brought him into the great hall at the old colony. She'd been surrounded by big rock walls and hanging vines with the constant babble of the river below, everything open and bright except for the threat of Fell hanging over everything.

Pearl had put her golden hand against Moon's cheek, hints of brilliant blue across her knuckles, and brought him into the connection between the ruling queen and her colony. Moon had melted at the first touch of her power, his body soft, expression opening. Jade hadn't known then how impossible that expression was, that it would take a year, no, more than that, before she saw anything like that it again.

Because the next thing Pearl had done was to use that open door into his mind to carve her rejection as deeply into his inner self as she could. _Feral, scum, trash_. Until he'd wrenched himself away snarling and bleeding.

Jade didn't know if that was why Moon had never really tied into the colony again, even during evening song, or if it was another side effect of growing up away from any other Raksura. If he just didn't know how.

**

“Do you know what the song is for?”

She pulled him to the balcony overlooking the well, the harmony deepening as more Raksura added their voices. 

“To sound nice?” Moon sounded casual, but he was looking into the well with an expression that was both longing and unnerved. Jade realized she'd never seen him during the evening song, only heard him. He'd never joined at all until they'd come back from Opal Night. ”The Arbora like beautiful things all the time that aren't practical.”

He was right the Arbora, and Jade was being an idiot again, smiling just because it meant he thought their court's song was beautiful. Moon sidled a little closer, and she pulled him in, a grip on his arm that didn't intend to let him go.

“The ruling queen brings the colony together. The song is one of the times she shares that connection with everyone.”

Moon shot her a sharp look, understanding dawning over his face like she'd answered answered a question he'd never thought to ask. 

“You've felt it?” Jade asked.

“I don't know. But the first time, my first night in the colony, it didn't sound like anything I'd ever heard. It felt like it was getting into my bones, like it wasn't just a _sound_.”

A sliver of the Queen's level was visible below them, hints of colored scales, the ruling queen's faction sitting near the well where they could seen and heard. Pearl's presence was heavy in Jade's head, the echoes of the colony behind it. Some people were easier to pick out than others -- Stone, Merit, Heart. Ember. And above it all, Pearl.

She turned back to Moon, gentling her hands so that she was holding him, not trapping him. “I can bring you into it.”

She was mostly sure about that.

Moon looked warily between her and the well, the song flowing out of it and surrounding them. Jade had to consciously push back against the sense of the colony trying to pull her in; to remember she had a specific, selfish goal tonight, not one that the colony shared. It was difficult to remember selfish things after the colony pulled you in.

He lifted his hand, bracelets clinking. Jade didn't think she needed that much contact, but she took his hand anyway. He held on tightly.

“Ok,” he said.

She could see on his face that he was affected by the song and drawn to it, but Jade could barely feel him in her sense of the colony. He wasn't connected at all, she realized. He shouldn't be so distant, not as strong in Raksuran magic as Jade knew he had to be.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Normally Jade felt the colony through her mother. She had only reached for a specific person before to keep them from shifting. This wouldn't be like that; it couldn't be about trapping and control, not with Moon.

Moon was a quiet, rough presence in her sense of the Raksura around her. Even though he was right in front of her, it was like she couldn't see him if she looked at him straight on in her mind's eye. She was worried she’d hurt him, run him over, except that the longer she spent looking at him with her other senses, the more she could feel a deep, still power behind it, untutored except by survival. It had been a necessity of the life he'd led, the control and discipline he'd needed to keep going, but she suspected Moon's bull-headed strength came from more than just his circumstances -- now she knew it was a characteristic of his bloodline. 

Moon jerked under her hands, and she knew she'd reached him.

Without changing, his expression seemed to open. She could suddenly see the way the flat line of his mouth concealed anxiety, the way he met her eyes to show determination despite his expectation of failure -- or maybe it was the expectation of pain. It felt like intuition, but it was the connection between her mind and his.

She let out a breath, pulling her sense of the colony through Pearl to the front of her mind. It wasn't a unified feeling like the whole colony had come together in one mind. It was a hum running underneath the song, a complicated vibrating mass of many people. Out of that complicated mix, some common yearnings rose to the top. While you were a part of the song, they felt like _your_ yearnings -- to be happy, to be safe, to be healthy. By wanting those things together, you wanted them for other people, not just for yourself; you wanted a successful and healthy colony because it was _your_ colony, all of yours. 

For the first time, Jade wondered what that would be like if you'd never really felt it before, if your whole life you had expected to be alone. Overwhelming maybe. But it also felt _good,_ and she wanted Moon to feel that, the faith that he was home, and so she pulled on the prickly rumble that was Moon in her head and pushed him into her awareness of the colony.

Moon jerked again, but he didn't pull away. He pulled his hand out of her grip to put it over his mouth. His face was open and raw, eyes wide, startled, and this time that wasn't just in her head.

She could feel him in the connection to the colony now, a strange roiling presence fluctuating between loud and quiet, as though he were reaching for that shared sense of home even as he pulled away from it, frightened and unprepared.

“It's okay,” she said. “It's okay, it's real.”

She pulled him in, and unexpectedly, he went, his arms wrapped around himself as she wrapped hers around him. She tightened her grip, and he pressed gratefully into her, shivering against her scales. His presence in the colony awareness seemed to shudder too. It made her want to tear things apart.

She could imagine her mother's disapproval -- Pearl hadn't wanted Moon in Indigo Cloud in the first place. But that had been a long time ago in another colony, and she was the one who had said Jade had picked him, sickness and all.

Jade shifted, wrapping her her wings around him and pulling him back from the well. It would matter to Moon to not be seen while he was upset; he hadn't grown up with the colony always in his business. Of course, they were tied into the colony right now which meant everyone was _very much_ in their business.

She remembered again the last time Moon felt this; how much he liked it and then how swiftly Pearl had ruined it. With her mind open, the memory was vivid and bright, the emotions as deep as they had been that first time -- worse because now she knew what Moon was to her.

She'd forgotten Moon wasn't with everyone else on the other side of her connection to Pearl, only able to feel her thoughts and feelings in a distant way unless she chose to put them into her song. Moon was connected _directly to Jade._

She felt his panic and grabbed for him, inexpertly throwing more of her sense of self around him like her arms encircled him. It felt like losing her balance, more of her awareness tumbling into Moon than was left in her own head. 

And she fell into his despair.

It surrounded her: a lifetime's collection of wounds to the heart, rejections and desperate flight, and the knowledge that people meant to hurt her, even kill her, and did so with awareness and forethought. It was the dark mirror of the feeling of home and shared struggle inside the colony connection, and she was drowning in it, barely able to feel Moon's skin against her scales. She gasped for air.

She felt Moon try to shift, and like an idiot who was panicking too much too think, she clamped down on it, her claws closing until she felt pain run through them both. He struggled against her mind, a furious tempest strong enough to smash an old growth tree at the base.

Her mother's presence, cool and golden came over her. Jade could suddenly think. She pulled back from Moon's memories of pain; pulled Moon with her. With Pearl there, the colony connection felt crystal, defined and easy to understand, and Jade could bring Moon into that calm just a little, while shielding him from the full power of it.

“Jade,” Moon said, hoarse.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” Jade said. There was blood on her claws. She picked him up and fled away from the well to her bower.

She was waiting for him to push out of her arms, to shift and dive over the balcony and away, but Moon lifted his arms and wrapped them sound her neck, laying his cheek against her collarbone. Jade stared down at him, startled and thinking it was the last thing in the world she deserved.

**

Jade woke up with Stone leaning over her, eyeing Moon curled up against her.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he told her seriously, and as usual, infuriatingly vague. He handed her a letter, the paper heavy and formal, tiny gold threads pressed into the material. She held it up to the light, frowning. The mark on it was from Emerald Twilight, and it had already been opened.

Chime and Balm came in with food as she was trying to get the letter open left-handed without waking Moon. She had an idea of where it had come from, and she didn't think she was going to like it. 

She dropped it on top of her stomach, looking to Balm with a sigh. She wasn't going to like this either.

“What is that?” Chime asked, and Jade handed him the letter. They had equal snooping rights into Moon's business, especially when Stone had started it. It wasn't a one person job; Jade would go crazy if it was.

Balm crossed her arms over her chest, expression resigned. She didn't look annoyed though or embarrassed or sympathetic so maybe her mistake last night hadn't been as all encompassing as Jade thought.

“Did we ruin the song?” she said. _Was I as obviously an idiot to everyone as it felt like? “_ Did we make everyone unhappy?”

“That was you then?” Balm nodded toward Jade's shoulder, currently warmed by sleeping consort. “We could feel Moon. I don’t think anyone realized he hadn’t really been a part of it before, but he’s -- strong. We felt him panic, and then you got really loud and then you both got very quiet.”

Jade stared up at the ceiling and closed her eyes in dread. “Did the Arbora panic?”

“No.”

“Is my mother going to kill me for trying to take over the court?” 

Because that's what the community connection _was_ really. Queens could physically challenge each other, but it was the Arbora and their connection to the queen that really determined who ruled the court. And Jade had tried to take that over, even if it was unintentional, even if she'd just been trying to reach for her own consort at first. She'd let it spill over to the whole colony like the most incompetent challenge in the history of the Reaches.

“What?” Chime squawked. He'd been leaning over Moon inspecting the scratches Jade had left just below his shoulder blades, the letter open in his other hand. They weren't deep, but they were still _there._ Jade swallowed but met his eyes, taking responsibility.

Balm was giving her an unimpressed look.

“Balm,” Jade said, “tell me.”

Balm lifted an eyebrow. Why did she look _amused._ Jade glared. 

“Nobody thought you were challenging Pearl. Everyone felt her pull you back in and settle the court.” Balm smiled wryly. “She told the Arbora you were doing well to handle such a powerful consort.”

_Everyone_ had felt Pearl rescue Jade and the first consort from Jade's inability to handle the colony. No wonder her mother wasn't mad.

“So I’m adorable but unfit to lead,” Jade growled, skin prickling self-consciously. She ran her hand up Moon's back, a reminder to herself of what she had, even if she'd made a fool of herself in front of all the Arbora and her mother's warriors. 

“That doesn't sound that bad though,” Moon said, warm against her throat. 

Jade did a double take. He sounded sleepy, unbothered. 

“No, it’s okay. I wanted to know.” He lifted his head to look uncertainly at Balm. “What did… how badly did I do?” 

Balm looked at Jade.

“Tell the truth,” Jade said.

“There’s some disagreement,” Balm said, “about whether it was appropriate to share your fear with the court when you’re a leader of the court, or whether the court is supposed to share and soothe fear. But it seems generally that people were glad to feel you in the connection so strongly. It made the court seem healthy and stable.”

Moon lifted his head to look at her in surprise. Jade rolled her eyes to the ceiling. So they'd _both_ decided they'd been the public idiot last night. _Of course_. Either they were a perfect match or this partnership was going to end as badly as Moon seemed to think. She pulled him more securely against her chest, a message to the universe that she at least was going to stick it out right to the bloody, disastrous end.

“Stable,” Moon repeated, eyeing Balm skeptically.

“She means they feel like they’re not going to have to find a new first consort,” Chime said. “That you’re not a traveler like Stone.” 

“Is that… what they want?”

“Have you ever met an Arbora,” Chime said exasperated. He gestured helpfully at himself. “Also, what is this?”

He was holding up the letter.

Moon looked at like it was a viper he had a personal grudge against. “It's from Shadow.”

“And it's very… polite?” Chime said helplessly. He made a flailing, confused gesture.

“He said congratulations,” Moon said very carefully, “on not needing to do anything else for the court. Because a clutch secured my place.”

“Good, you're set for life!” Chime said, frustrated at the same time Jade thought, _Ah, I see. No, Moon wouldn't feel comfortable living anywhere as freeloader._

_“_ I'm leaving,” Balm said, mildly. “Yell if you draw more blood.”

Jade ducked a spine to send her out. Moon was glaring at Chime and didn't notice.

_“_ Maybe _Shadow_ would be set for life,” Moon said. 

Chime waved this away as easily as he'd dismissed the letter. “What, because he's a proper, fancy consort? You're much prettier that he is, so all that should work for you just as well.”

Jade had seen Shadow, first consort of Emerald Twilight, with her own two eyes, and so she wasn’t sure that was objectively true, but it _was_ true that she would choose Moon over Shadow in a heartbeat every time. More important though was the honest, shy way Moon was gaping at Chime after this offhand pronouncement.

“You heard Balm,” Jade said. “Just staying is something the Arbora value.”

Moon looked grateful to be saved from having to respond to Chime's statement about his great beauty. Jade was happy to let him put it aside so it could percolate through his understanding until it joined a collection of memories of being _wanted._ And eventually one day _being wanted_ might outweigh the lifelong collection of hurt that had been so dark and deep that it had taken her breath away.

“So the way I prove to the court I deserve to stay is by staying.”

“Yes,” Jade said.

“That argument seems circular, but the conclusion is sound.”

“Chime,” Jade said, “go away for a little bit.”

Chime gave her a moody look, but he put the letter down. He gave Moon's scratches one last inspection, and then, greatly daring, he pressed a quick kiss to the skin above the wounds. He was gone before Moon could twist to shoot a baffled look after him. It was a common reaction from Moon in response to kindness, especially from Chime, whose affection came with a childish hopefulness, like it always contained a shy request for attention in return. Jade suspected Moon wasn't used to being the arbiter of who was and wasn't wanted in a relationship.

“I'm sorry,” Jade said. “About last night. I thought it would help.”

“It did,” Moon said. “I knew a little bit what it was supposed to feel like, but I couldn't make myself try. I asked Ember -- ”

“You asked Ember for help?” Jade had guessed, but it was still a relief to hear it. “You never ask anyone.”

Moon gave her a mutinous look, but it was so true he couldn't even pretend to deny it.

“You can ask me too,” Jade said helpfully. 

“I don’t mind if _Ember_ doesn’t like me.”

“I’m not going to dislike you -- I’m the one who’s responsible for you -- ”

“That doesn’t help.”

“Well, I want to help!”

“Ok, you can help!”

“How?”

Moon picked at the embroidery on the blanket, back gone rigid. He muttered, “Don’t renounce me.”

Jade sat up, dumping him on the bed, horrified and sick. Was this something she'd done last night, dredging up that pit of despair? He'd said she'd _helped._ “ _Of_ _course_ I’m not going to _renounce_ you.”

Moon crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, thanks! That’s very helpful!”

“How can you still think...”

“I don’t think that you would -- ”

“Even right now when I am having this stupid conversation, when you are driving me up the _wall_ \-- I am _still_ not going to. So how is that being helpful? How is that doing anything?”

“Just because it’s easy for you doesn’t mean it doesn’t help me.”

That was Chime, there in his words, and it meant he really _was_ asking people for help, which he'd never done before. That was a good thing, she had to remember that, even if he was the most infuriating person in the Three Worlds, and she was seriously considering throwing him into the well.

Jade rolled over and put her face in the pillows piled next to Moon. She made a few muffled shouts. 

She took a breath, feeling her pounding heart start to slow. She sensed Moon staring down at her, the sound of his quick breaths and the smell of his adrenaline. Nobody said anything, like they'd poured all their panic out and found themselves empty. She turned her head, peeking up at Moon, aware that she looked a bit like a fledgling throwing a tantrum. In a year or two, _their_ fledglings would be throwing tantrums like this, probably into these same pillows.

“Wow,” Moon said, “you and Chime _have_ have been hanging out.”

“Get down here and have sex with me,” Jade growled.

Moon touched her cheek, tracing the shape of the light blue chevrons on her scales. “I think I’m supposed to make you tea first. Ember was pretty clear.”

“ _Moon_.”

He grinned. Jade stopped breathing. Chime was right: forget Shadow, Moon was the greatest beauty in the Western Reaches.

“Okay,” he said and came tumbling down into her open arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The working summary for this story was: "dating someone with anxiety and depression is a delight for everyone involved because anxiety and depression are a delight for everyone involved."
> 
> This story exists because a friend of mine found it annoying that Moon kept thinking Indigo Cloud didn't want him long after he had plenty of evidence to the contrary. She felt it was forced melodrama; I thought it was the most relatable, totally accurate, oh-thank-god-someone-understands thing about the books. And so I wrote this story about Moon's doubt.


End file.
